can anybody share descriptions of elaborate/clever alarm apps for mobile devices?

my cell cannot run any apps. So when solving the problem of “how do I make myself get up even if I really don’t want to” the cleverest I can get with it is set several alarms about 20 mins one after the other, and then hope that if the first doesn’t get me, the second one will. Or, if all else fails, maybe 3rd one will finish it off…

Assuming that the drag yourself out of bed issue is a common one, I wonder if there are some clever solutions already implemented in smartphones that fellow Dopers could share, whether in the praise, mocking or YMMV mode. Any solemn “sluggard, I am your mother” holograms? Smartphone-operated cold water showers? iPhone iLevitationRays? What’s the best or the weirdest you have seen?

The one that I liked on Android used a combination of:

  • Gradually increasing volume on the ring starting from “vibrate only” to “shrieking siren”
  • You could snooze it for a few minutes up to X number of times, after which…
  • You have to solve a random math question (like 425 + 529) to actually turn off the alarm or it’ll just keep ringing
  • Having separate recurring alarms you could set (such as one for MWF, one for TTh, and nothing on the weekends)

Well it’s an app, which you seem to be against, but I use Progressive Alarm Clock, which is basically the app version of the physical Zen alarm clock, which chimes a bell at faster and faster intervals until you wake up.

Before I had my iPod touch I simulated the experience by playing a single mp3 file of the entire sequence. I imagine you could do something similar on any phone that allows custom ringtones.

My brother use to wake himself up with a recording of himself speaking. Although I’m not sure what the content of that was.

While answer to the OP will involve facts, they also are opinions. Moved.

samclem Moderator

Alarms, regardless of cell-based or traditional, are best placed across the room. The nightstand is the worst place for an alarm, and that always got me in trouble. If it’s across the room, I have to get to my feet to shut it off. Once I’m on my feet, it’d be too much of a shitbag move for me to lie back down.

I use the regular alarm function on my Incredible because I like MP3s as alarms (RingDroid). Electric Avenue for a normal morning, and Aneurism for when I know I have to haul ass somewhere.

I am not against apps - this question is all about studying interesting ways in which apps have been written for this purpose on general purpose smartphones.

A separate, if related, question would be to ask about features of dedicated alarm clock devices (which is where, indeed, the darth-mother hologram in the clouds is more likely to be found). But it may well be that interesting stuff has been achieved just with the smartphone, e.g. as witness Reply’s app that makes you solve math problems.

Sleep Cycle works really great - you put your iPhone/iPod in bed with you next to your pillow and the accelerometer analyses your movement patterns. You specify a time by which you want to be woken up and it will try to wake you up in a phase of heavier movement = lighter sleep. So it doesn’t yank you out of a deep sleep phase but just gives you a little nudge when you’re almost awake anyway. The alarm also isn’t a classic alarm, but it gives a selection of relaxing sounds, so the first thing you hear in the morning isn’t the brutal drill of an alarm clock.